Friday Four
Friday, March 18, 2016
1. If the following sounds interesting,
follow this
link to take a quiz based on the results:
[R]esearchers affiliated with Verto Analytics and the Qatar Computing Research Institute published a paper in the online journal arXiv that attempts to nail that down. In a nutshell, they cross-referenced the app usage and demographics of more than 3,700 people and determined which apps and attributes correlate. Based on those models, they then found that they could predict a user's gender, age, marital status and income with between 61- and 82-percent accuracy. [link omitted]For the record, when I took the quiz, it correctly reported that I am a "married, middle-aged guy."
2. I was mildly amused by the following item, from a story about "How Rich Warren Buffett Actually Is": "In 2013, Buffett made on average $37 million per day -- more than what Jennifer Lawrence made that year."
3. Is it just the little boy in me, or is there something cathartic about watching someone pour molten aluminum into the mouth of a fire ant colony? The resulting "anthill art" is pretty and is available for purchase.
4. Finally, after several tries, I've found a pepper-seasoned beer I like, Heat Series Oaked Chipotle Ale by Flying Dog:
Deep crimson to mahogany red color body, with quite a bit of clarity. One finger slightly fleeting tan head, and a little bit of a creamed collar and very thin puck left over.Until this one, I always was annoyed by the near-absence of pepper taste in such beers.
Really fun aroma. Smoked pepper and a bit of almost rauchbier smoked malt like character. Hits some caramel notes and a real nice smokey pepper vibe. Some excellent malt sweetness accents nicely to take the edge off nicely. Really mouthwatering, if sort of having some subdued oak character.
Palate washes slight watery and a bit clean, but flavors come with no problem. Nice heat and warmth, with a bit flavored smolder but less than hinted on the nose. Sweet caramel slightly and a bit of ashen like aftertaste. There's a little bit of banana estery quality to this as well which is a bit surprising and comes off slightly unexpected.
A pretty decent peppered ale.
-- CAV
2 comments:
My brother is an entomologist who specializes in fire ants, and he used to do this sort of thing as part of his field research. If memory serves me, they used molten zinc instead of aluminum, but the principle is the same, as is the outcome if you happen to be one of the ants. The colonies get surprisingly large and complex.
Kyle,
That makes sense to me in retrospect: How else would they know all those colony structures I'd see in encyclopedias without some way of making a cast?
Gus
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